Day 16 - Still Hanging Around in Sibanga

Today we stayed near our roots in Sibanga. We spend time meeting with Pastor John to encourage him, we visited one last time with Timothy Mahindu, and caught up with our old friend Joseph Kariuki. Joseph is a five-star chef who used to cook for Zippy but he recently decided to return to his farm so he can be closer to his family.


Grace invited us to visit her at her “posho mill”; a place for grinding maize into a fine powder for making ugali, a Kenyan staple. Once people have finished their farming and other activities of the day, the mill becomes very busy. We learned what a sharp business woman Grace is when she told us how much she figured electricity costs her per minute! So instead of turning the mill on and off every time she has a customer, she waits until a que has formed. The customers seem to understand and it becomes a social gathering place while they wait! Grace then arranged for someone to manage her mill briefly while we met her son, Kibet. When we last visited with Grace, she was expecting Kibet and after we left, the little guy was reluctant to join the world . . . he was quite late in his arrival! But as we visited with him today he seemed to be a very content little boy. Surprisingly, where many small children are afraid of our white skin, Kibet allowed both Ellen and Dawn to hold him on their laps and he didn’t cry . . . until his mommy left to return to the mill!

All in all, a very productive day which included surprise visits with a police officer to whom we gave six of our Bibles . . . one for him and the rest for his officers, and the chef (Ben) at a small restaurant who told us about his work in starting three different orphanages. It turns out Ben knows our friends Jeff and Carla who also run an orphanage in Sibanga! Another awesome day behind us for which we give thanks! Tomorrow is our last full day in Sibanga as we leave early Wednesday morning for the return trip to Nairobi. We’re still not finished though, as we have people yet to meet with before our flight leaves on Friday!